Tag: Chamber of the Year

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Brandon Burton 0:00
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your hosts Brandon Burton. And it’s my goal here on the podcast to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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You’re joining us for a special episode in our 2025 ACCE chamber of the year finalists series. And for today’s episode, we’re thrilled to welcome Tamara Fleischhaker . Tamara is a powerhouse in public policy, community development and business advocacy. She currently serves as the interim president and CEO, as well as the chief experience officer of the Ocala Metro Chamber and Economic Partnership, or the CEP. With nearly two decades of leadership at the CEP, Tamara has played a pivotal role in merging organizations, launching innovative programs like business incubators and award winning communication strategies, and steering grass root political victories that have shaped the region’s future. Tamara’s roots in business run deep, from helping out in her family’s screen printing company in high school to work in in corporate marketing at Fortune 100 company to becoming one of Florida’s most respected chamber professionals. She is a certified chamber executive, a Florida certified chamber professional, and an IOM program graduate, recognized as a 2016 professional of the Year by the Florida Association of chamber professionals. Tamara recently chaired that same board in 2022 to 2023 outside of work, Tamara is a passionate community advocate, serving on multiple nonprofit boards. She’s also a die hard hockey fan who splits her loyalty between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple leaves, and she loves exploring every corner of Florida but Tamara, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today. First, congratulations to you and your team for being selected as chamber of the year finalists. It’s quite an accomplishment, but thank you. Yeah. I wanted to give you a chance to say hello to all the listeners out there, but also to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Tamara Fleischhaker 3:04
All right. Well, wonderful. So thank you so much for this opportunity. We have such a tremendous team here, so I’m really grateful that that all of their work to get us to this finalist position. It’s truly an honor you. So you’ve already talked about my hockey background. You know, I love water, whether it’s the ocean or frozen ponds, if you will. And I probably, another interesting fact is I also love hot air ballooning. I had the opportunity to get involved in that when I was a teenager, and because I’ve been in a festival life, kind of a festival volunteer, for most of my life, and had the opportunity to crew for hot air balloons. And also, you know, go up in a few and that has always been a lot of fun. It’s something I don’t get much time to do now, in in the current role that I have, but it’s, it’s still a passion for me

Brandon Burton 3:51
that is really cool. I’ve never been up in a hot air balloon. I don’t know if I could, I don’t know if I could do it. I don’t know. I’ve seen videos of people that go up and they do skydiving from them, where they get no thank you. I don’t need to. I can’t do that for sure. I’m out myself. Yeah, very cool. Well, tell us a little bit about the CEP to kind of set the stage for our conversation. Let us know the size, the organization, staff, scope of work you guys are involved with budget just to kind of prepare us for the topics we cover.

Tamara Fleischhaker 4:23
Sure. So we our organization was formed about 13 years ago through a merger of both the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Corporation in the Ocala Metro, and I’ve been with the organization through that merger. So it’s really been an exciting 12 years for us. When it was first formed, we were all coming out of a pretty tough, historic downturn of the economy, and we certainly had our issues in our community. So the organization was really formed with the goal in mind to be exactly what this community needed. I know people have. Merged and unmerged organizations, yeah, over time. And, you know, they always say, Well, what did you do? And I said, You know what the key to this is find out what your community needs. And that is what we did. And we’ve certainly seen the success with doing that. You know, Florida has seen tremendous growth. We ourselves were listed this year as the fastest, fastest growing Metro in the country, with a 4% growth rate year over year, which was a little bit of a okay, that explains why it feels like this in our community. And then, which is, of course, why we’ve also been focused on infrastructure. We’ll get to that in a little bit. But so this organization has, has really focused on, how do we grow jobs from the ground up? So entrepreneurship, we run two incubator facilities within our team. We also, of course, work on Business Retention and Expansion and business attraction in the traditional lanes of economic development. But outside of that, we are a full service, chamber functioning organization as well. And so we have on, you know, all of our full team that you would expect as a part of that we do all of the networking events and educational events, run a adult and a youth leadership program through the organization. So we have all of what you would traditionally expect within both sides of organizations. We just get to do it all with a really integrated team. We have about 30 staff members that host all of that because, additionally we we have a foundation within our structure. We have a a CDFI that we are working on within that organization. We also run a market space, which during covid, is something that really became a piece for us, that we have a facility, that it’s undercover, but yet outdoors, and we run a Saturday market out of there, and we rent it out to the community for different events, and, you know, festival pieces that they might do as well. So gives us another stream of income there, but it also adds a little bit more staff to the team. So again, we that’s our size of staff, we have about 1300 partners. We call our members partners because they are partners in the work that we do to support the business community. So that is how we look at our organization. So right around 1300 partners, I’m not sure if there’s something I missed in there, but I’m sure that if there’s another key point, you’ll let me know.

Brandon Burton 7:20
Yeah, no, I think you did a great job covering kind of that scope that you guys are involved with. I guess one of the aspects, budget wise, what do you guys look at? Budget wise? Yeah,

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:32
so for budget, we run about 4.4 million across our six entities,

Brandon Burton 7:37
okay, and I think that’s important, just for those listening to be able to try to scale, you know, the different programs and Exactly,

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:43
yeah, because they’re also wondering, how do you have 30 staff members? That’s

Brandon Burton 7:47
part of it, right? Absolutely so. And from what I remember before and having Kevin Sheilley on the podcast a couple of times, you guys are heavy in the equine industry as well. We

Tamara Fleischhaker 7:59
are. So yeah, we are blessed to be the horse capital of the world, and that is, I know a lot of people ask the question, Well, what about some other particular areas across the country? And we absolutely agree that Lexington is the thoroughbred capital. Ours is because we represent 73 different breeds, and we have one horse to every four people in our community. So we have more horses than any other place in the country, and that is part of the USDA registration of information. So yep, our our groups here have trademarked that name, and we love that. I I still believe we are the only chamber I know. We’re the only chamber in the country right now that has an equine initiative, which we absolutely love, because that is a huge part of our tourism trade here, and we absolutely enjoy having that be a part of our organization. And yes, so that is under what we call our traditional chamber side operations. But there is also economic opportunity in that as well, because we have a lot of companies that have created equine products in the community to meet the needs of what that horse community looks like.

Brandon Burton 9:04
Yeah, I think that’s a great example of going back to what you had said about creating the organization to what your community needs, right? You guys leaned heavy into that. So that’s awesome, absolutely. Well, on these chamber of the year finalist episodes, I like to spend most of our time really diving into the two program synopsis that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. So we’ll take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll dive in deep on both of those and learn more about what you guys submitted.

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Brandon Burton 12:17
All right. Tamara, we are back. So as I mentioned before the break, we’ll dive into the two program synopsis that were submitted on your chamber of the year application. I know one of them has to do with the sales sales tax referendum, sales tax referendum. If I could speak right, why don’t you tell us what that’s about, the history of that and how it came to be. You know, at the front of mind right now for you guys to approach,

Tamara Fleischhaker 12:42
sure, absolutely so for us, this was actually our third referendum that we ran on a sales surtax for infrastructure and first responders. We started back in 2015 again, recognizing that our community was growing so rapidly that even if we looked at impact fees and our traditional methodologies of you know you’re getting your property tax, we wanted to maintain a balance in all of that, because as a growing community, to meet the needs. So we recognize that the best thing we could do is run a sales tax because then it’s not just our community that pays for it, it’s all those visitors that come to us. So we started that first process. Ran it for four years, and it was successful. We won. Then what we found out is that there continued to be some pressure from the legislature about how taxes were run. They were setting some standards about when in the year cycle you could do it and for how many years you might be able to so we did another four year and was very successful. That led us to looking at this tremendous growth that we’ve already spoken of, how fast we were growing. We want to be able to keep up with that infrastructure and make sure that the services that our community enjoys are still able to be found in the community as you’re moving here, or for someone who’s been here their whole life, the other piece of that is our schools are struggling, because often what they find is they get some unfunded mandates that come along to them, and you have that tremendous growth, they’ve got more students, and they’re outpacing the facilities that we’ve had. So we also realized that we had kind of a dual need for what was going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. So we thought, you know, when you buy a house, you don’t plan for just four years of how much you’re going to pay for a mortgage, you’re planning 20 years, right? 20 years or more. So we said, let’s think about this in terms of how roads are being built in the community, how the transportation plans are being written. And we decided to tackle it for a 20 year penny sales tax for transportation infrastructure. And then we decided to add a half penny for 10 years dedicated to school facilities. So that might mean existing, upgrading existing facilities and or building new schools, which is all happening as a part of that plan. One of the things. That has made this so successful for us is when we first went to the community with it, we were very transparent with it. The city and county joined in on this process, and every dollar that they’re spent, they’ve created a budget for it in advance. It goes through the city’s budget process every year. It goes through the counties, and every time they spend money, they show the money. So the county has a dedicated website, and each of them has it in their budget, what they’re spending from those committed pennies that they’re getting and how they’re using it, whether it’s 10 fire trucks and, you know, new radios for something, or whether it is improvements to our jail facility and we built, you know, 17 miles of roadway or resurface, 12 miles. It literally gets put down to every penny that they spend and how they’re doing that. And then each year in the budget cycle, they can, you know, re look at events that are going on in the community, or they can look at what their use is, or a special needs. Do we, you know, are we building out a new section of our community? Maybe need a new fire station. So you know, that can be adjusted each year as a part of the budget process, but that’s how we went about, kind of taking the lead in this and recognizing that we needed to bring a community together. The greatest part of this is how we were able to mobilize so many different groups together on this. We brought together our realtor Association, road builders. We brought together all of our Of course, you know, we’ve got our public and private on both sides of that, but the business community really came together for this, and we raised over $250,000 to help run commercials and take kind of a new digital turn on that. But we also had some of these organizations going ahead and sending email blasts or doing social media campaigns. We even went to to the unions for the school board and also to our first responders, and they shared out this information because it helps them. They’re getting new equipment. They’re getting well taken care of. It doesn’t come out of general funds. So they still get to, you know, maintain the salaries, and we still get they still get to have improvements there. Because the worst thing a community can do it would be to go ahead and train people and then not be able to pay those first responders and have them go to someone else’s community. So we put all of these pieces together. We were so excited that the community really came together behind this. It really was one of those things where, you know, you get that broad collaboration as a part of what we’re doing, and with that, we’re actually ending up building two elementary schools, adding a new wing to a middle school, and building a new high school. All in those projects are already in process for the next five years, and so there are some other improvements that will happen out of that for the schools, but it really is a big piece of how do we make sure that local governments have the flexibility that they need, that they can stay sustainable and that they have long term funding sources for the growing needs of our community, where they don’t have to put that tax burden just on the property tax zone, you know, for those who would pay property tax for owners. So that was a really big piece for us. Really exciting. It was the first time we’d ever done true digital media, basically being on, you know, Amazon Prime, being on Hulu. It was a whole new venture for us to take that large of a piece. But we, you know, we also did a lot of conversations to business groups, anyone that wanted us to talk about it. We come see them. We went out to several communities, you know, we’ve got larger housing communities in the in the in our metro, and went out talk to them, gave them the whole, you know, here’s what it is. We’re just laid out the facts. And it was really incredible to see how they all really supported that and came behind it. We passed it in every single district, every voting district, which I think is, you know, the bigger piece of this, that kind of, you know, a lot of people told us it’s going to be close. You’re going to be you might get one passed, you probably won’t get both, and it’ll probably be a pretty close vote. Well, I’ll take 63% of the vote for the sales tax renewal and 59% for the schools tax so when I look at those numbers, I think that that’s that’s a pretty good thing, saying our community agreed that we need to take care of our schools, and that we need to have our students in safe classrooms and having all the technology that they need for the future, and also that we’re taking care of our first responders and that we have great roads to travel on in the Ocala Metro. So, you know, we’re pretty excited about how that all came together this last year.

Brandon Burton 19:38
Yeah, think that’s a huge help with the for example, the the transportation and first responders, sales tax, when every penny is being accounted for, and you can go back and say, Look, this is where it’s all being spent, that makes it a whole lot easier to pass the next time it absolutely does. My question, when it when it comes to the schools, is there certain things that that money is allowed to be allocated? To or is there like, for example, sometimes when a bond is passed, maybe it can’t pay teacher salaries, but it can build new infrastructure, new schools, campuses and stuff like that. Yeah. So, yeah,

Tamara Fleischhaker 20:12
yes, yeah. So the parameters for this, actually, it is all about capital outlay. So this was very specifically for new construction, for facility updates, so there is none of this being spent on salaries. But again, it helps to keep that out of the general fund. And because of the term, they were able to put Bonds out so they could build the schools now and pay those off as they collect that sales tax over the next, you know, few years. So yeah, it is very specifically because they had funding, and we’ve helped them find it for other programming. We actually passed a one mill renewal two years ago that helps them with our technical training skills and being able to have more in the arts sector of their schools. So we’ve been helping out in that lane and bringing people together for that for you know, this is more than this one election cycle, but yes, this particular sales tax is dedicated very specifically to the capital investments within the schools.

Brandon Burton 21:12
So my other question with this program is, with the capital that was raised to promote and do the digital marketing and everything that you guys did it? Did you have somebody in house that could kind of leverage that, or did you contract and go with an agency that could help put you in contact with prime and Hulu and, you know those examples you mentioned?

Tamara Fleischhaker 21:29
Yeah, this, this was the first time. So in the first couple of campaigns we we did a lot in house, social media, driven in those but this was well outside of our wheelhouse. So we absolutely did hire an agency. And I will tell you, it was an agency that was referred to us by a partner in the community. And again, you know, we had so much of our business community that said, you know, we’re absolutely behind you on this, and helped fund that investment. So yeah, we did a little bit of we supplied some B roll and some other video because we do have our own video studio in house, so we were able to work with them on that and help put together the scripting. And so that was kind of the fun part, that we were able to use some of what we’ve done in the community and our own video studio and supply that information to them. But yeah, we definitely hired this out, just to make sure you want to put the experts in a smart move. Yeah, yeah. And I think every year, we all realize as Chamber organizations, it gets harder and harder when you’re doing political things on social media and and those types of channels. There’s so many restrictions that are put in place that it’s always best to let the experts do that if you’re in a position to do it.

Brandon Burton 22:37
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s shift gears and change our focus on to the other program that you guys submitted on your application. If you’d like to introduce that program and tell us what it was all about.

Tamara Fleischhaker 22:49
Absolutely. So our other program is what we call the Ocala Metro Catalyst Fund. This is a community development finance institution which is regulated through the US Treasury Department, this was a new thing for us. We I guess I should step back and say, you know, we started an incubator program with the help of the county and city on the campus that we have here, because we are right across from City Hall, and within our campus area here, they had a building that used to be the original power plant for the city of Ocala, and so both of those entities helped us open up in that building. So it’s the power plant business incubator. So we started there with a real focus on entrepreneurship. And how do we help people to grow their own business? Right? It’s the greatest way that you can have control of your own career and your life is to be able to start your own business. And so we have been running that incubator since 2012 it has been incredibly successful, and this last year, we were able to open a second incubator location. But in the process of running these incubators, the biggest challenge I think we continue to recognize is that there’s an access to capital issue for entrepreneurs, and it can be even worse in some of our underserved communities. And we have three that we’ve really keep an eye on within our community, that those zip codes kind of tend to be the ones that really have struggled the most in our community, and have kind of been overlooked over the years. And so we have put programming from our incubators specifically into those communities. And what we recognized is traditional lenders don’t often help those in the underserved community, and they don’t have that way to do that. So what CDFIs do in a community is they help close that financial gap. They can spur economic growth and promote mobility where, you know, traditional lending falls short in that lane. So for us, you know, we did a lot of surveying, a lot of talking to people in the community. And you know, part of what happened is. It actually started in a post covid environment, right when we were looking at businesses that were receiving assistance through the Cares Act, and then we realized there continued to be this gap in critical funding in the state of Florida has made great inroads over the past couple of years, but we had already started into this process and recognize that for lower income zip codes. This is going to be an ongoing challenge with traditional lenders. So we started out a new 501, c3, and as you can imagine, in this being a federal program, there are a lot of regulations, a lot of processes to go through. So we did hire a consultant to help us start this process that got us on the on the road to this. And so, you know, we’ve now been able to offer some nano loans to businesses as a part of the process, and we’re already in the repayment process on that. And what we’re really looking forward to over the next few years is that we’re hoping to get our final certification in January. We’re fully on track with that. We’ve received a large grant from Treasury to make the next steps in this and working towards that certification. The other piece of it is our county government has also given us a grant that we’re using as a matching grant in the community. They gave us $75,000 to go out to the business community. And so we are currently raising matching grant funds through that so that we’ll be able to offer larger loans, where our next step is micro loans and those who would be anywhere from 2000 to 15,000 and then once we’re fully certified, and we can engage banks, then at that point as a part of the process, then we’re hoping to be able to go to those more traditional business loan sizes of somewhere between, you know, usually around $50,000 would be kind of the top end of those types of loans. But that gives businesses who are in their first five years of startup that working capital that they that they need. And again, we’re really targeting communities that would traditionally not be served by a traditional bank because of where they you know, those communities are, and because of their economic situation that they’re already in. So our goal is to try to make equity where we can in the community, and to try to balance that for everyone, so that there’s an equal opportunity. Because we do feel that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to to really create personal wealth and personal opportunity for you and your family.

Brandon Burton 27:27
Yeah, I love this idea. I’d love to see more chambers embrace this and be able to provide access to capital, funding to these, these businesses, you know, coming out of an incubator, these new businesses, I’m trying to get going. The biggest question that I have, so you addressed it, you know, how the funding, how this in, I think, in the the introduction, you had talked about your foundation. So this is how it’s within the foundation.

Tamara Fleischhaker 27:53
But this actually this, so this actually does run separately of our foundation. Oh, so yeah, just, yeah. Just to clarify our so our Foundation did help with initial startup funds. So you know, when we were trying to get those nano loans started, but we have, actually, this is its own separate 501, c3, organization now. So yeah, when we first started talking about it and how do we fund some of the initial pieces we were working on, we did use our foundation to help us with that, but at this point, it is a standalone organization, and so I think that’s what makes it a little more special as we’ve been able to move it forward. And I think that’s what makes it such an important program, is that it doesn’t rely on our foundation. Our foundation can still be dedicated to serving the mission of our overall organization, right where we talk about, you know that the foundation can magnify mission, and so that’s what we continue to work on. So this one is its own entity at this point,

Brandon Burton 28:48
awesome that. Thank you for that. Clarification. When it comes to the the Nano loans, the the soon to be micro loans that you you give out. How do you secure that? Like, what kind of is there collateral? Is there? How do you ensure that you get repayment and that it’s not just a gift?

Tamara Fleischhaker 29:06
Yes, no, yep. So, so we, you know, there is a whole comprehensive process, much like banks go through, right, looking at their financial situation, looking at the viability of that business, right? Because it’s partly the same process we use in an incubator is that business scalable. What, you know, what are the opportunities? And part of what the great part in doing this process is there’s a requirement for them to get this funding that they have to go through the technical training so they get the technical assistance that goes with it. So we’re working with these businesses. Our team over at our incubator is working with them every day to, you know, to check in and make sure that they’ve got all of the pieces of that ready. We actually, because we’ve had a great partnership with Kauffman Foundation through the incubator for several years. We have some of their programs, like the Fast Track Program, which is a great program that gets a business started on. Yeah, how do you even write a marketing plan? How do you write your business plan? And over the course of that, they’re writing all of those documents and really getting themselves on stable footing. Because the key to an incubator in any community is essentially, we say we help a business fail fast, right? If you’re going to make mistakes, do it in a safety net where you’ve got people around you that can help catch you and help get you back on track, because that’s the piece right. Businesses that are incubated, I am probably going to get the stats wrong, and those of your listeners will be like, that’s not the right stat, but I’m going to estimate that it’s about they’re 80% more successful in the first five years, whereas, you know, an average business without that kind of support network, you probably have about a, you know, 12% survival rate, and so we know that that’s already, you know, the piece to having a community that supports our entrepreneurs, and that’s a key piece, but having that opportunity for them to get that continued coaching that becomes a part of the process as well, because they don’t get their loan payments. If they don’t, you know, and have that technical assistance going on. And I think that’s the piece that makes this so special, and that’s a continuing piece, but that links it back into our incubator as we’re going forward now. The other thing that we did is we had an amazing event just recently, which was a matchmaker event, and this is where we bring in local banks. We had about 25 local banks, about 120 participants, and all of them come in and they sit down with those documents that they have, their business plans and their financial documents, and they talk to the banks about getting loans. And so the other piece is we’re teaching these businesses how to build up the what they need within their business that will help them in the future with regular, traditional loan programs. And that’s really the goal behind this, is to get them established, give them a credit history, because, more than anything, that’s what they’re missing. They don’t have a credit history, even if they had collateral. They’re a new business, right, right? It makes them risky. And so that’s that’s our goal, with all of this is really opening the door for them, for the future, for larger and other, you know, loan opportunities.

Brandon Burton 32:07
Yeah, that is fantastic. The whole point about helping these businesses fail fast, reminds me of Thomas Edison and a reporter asked him, you know, what do you think about all your failures? He’s like, I didn’t fail. I figured out 1000s of ways that a light bulb would not work, right? And that’s the whole idea. You fail fast so you can get to that solution.

Tamara Fleischhaker 32:25
Yeah, we actually have that quote on the wall in our incubator. We we went with a lot of those types of quotes as inspiration, because that’s it, right? And when you know so many people that you know, sometimes we talk about we have some serial entrepreneurs in our community too, and some of them are on their third or fourth company, because they just love that drive. Now that they’ve, you know, they’ve been so successful in their first business, they keep going on to the next. And I love seeing that.

Brandon Burton 32:48
Yeah, that’s awesome. But Tamara, as we begin to wrap things up, I wanted to ask for the listeners who are interested in taking their organization up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item would you suggest for them and trying to accomplish that goal.

Tamara Fleischhaker 33:03
So I think the first thing I would say is never think that you’re too small to try starting some of these programs. I think that’s that’s the biggest part is we say, well, we could never do what the Ocala CEP does, because we don’t have that kind of budget or that kind of staff. 13 years ago, there were five staff, and I can guarantee you, we had a small budget at the time. So I think the key to any of this is, what can you take away, what part of what we’re doing can you use, you know, if it’s, you know, from a sales tax standpoint, okay, take a look at your community. And is this something that you think with transparency and other things? Because I’ll share how we did it. I shared all the time, and I think that’s the great news about chambers, right? We talk about R and D all the time. I’m going to rip off and duplicate what somebody else is doing. And most of the things that we do truly are scalable. So even if there’s just a few of you, get a committee together, get, you know, get your board behind what you’re doing, and let them help lead the brigade for you. And what we’re doing with an incubator, you do not have to be in the situation we’re in. Get your community partners together. That’s what we do as Chamber organizations, right? We’re the catalyst. We’re the conveners. We bring people together. So get people behind you on this, whether that issue is housing, whether that is, you know, improvements in your communities, whether it’s entrepreneurship, there are so many lanes that you can bring people together, and that’s really what we do best. So I would say, don’t be afraid to try it. Just go for it. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 34:33
I love that response. I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of chambers of commerce, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Tamara Fleischhaker 34:45
So I think, you know, we talk about this all the time. We hear the news stories, and we see this kind of greater political divide, or so it seems. But I think what we’re finding more and more is as things seem a little more crazy in the environment. And around us, people look to their chamber. Businesses definitely look to us. And they say, Okay, we we’re asking you to lead, and I think we’re going to be called upon. We’re we’re already seeing it happening. And I’m sure chambers across the country are as well, that we’re being called upon to voice an opinion or be a part of more issues that are happening in our community, and of course, my only caution would be make sure that whatever you’re engaging in meets your mission, right that, because it’s so easy for us to have mission drift and stray away from that, but our voices matter so much in the community, and we’re going to continue to be called on so we all need to be thinking about that. What are we prepared to what is our process for engaging on issues, and what’s the right thing for our community, and how do we want to address that? As chambers,

Brandon Burton 35:47
yeah, I totally agree. But Tamara, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect or learn more about your approaches. There in Ocala. Where would you point them? What would be the best way for them to connect

Tamara Fleischhaker 36:04
with you? Well, the place that I will start them is our website. It is the OcalaCEP.com so Ocala is spelled o c, a, l, A, C, E, p.com, and you can see, we’ve got a team page there. We’re all you can find any one of us on that and make an outreach, and you’ll easily find me there. And the great news is, most of us are first name at Ocala, cep.com if you want to send an email. So again, I’m Tamara. It’s T, A, M, A, R, A, and so you can feel free to give me a call, you know, off of the website there, or you can give me an email and I’m happy to connect with you, or connect you with a member of my team who might be a better resource for you.

Brandon Burton 36:43
That’s very good, and we’ll make sure to have the website and our show notes to make it easy for people to find you guys and fantastic reach out and connect. But Tamara, this has been great having you on the show. Thank you for diving into these programs and telling us how you guys are making that secret sauce there in Ocala. But I wish you and your team Best of luck as chamber of the year.

Tamara Fleischhaker 37:05
Thank you so much. Brandon. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to your listeners.

Brandon Burton 37:11
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